Infinite Plane or Terrain ?

I am having a go at a moon landscape, I downloaded the PeterSharp Tut19, Making Craters.

I followed the tutorial but ended up with one crater in the terrain, obviously I wanted more than one to create the moon terrain, I started again and bought in an Infinite Plane but found out that you cannot edit it, which meant multiple craters was out of the question.

So my quick question is how do I make a terrain big enough that I can edit to create a cratered landscape ?

Could I use the instance lab to paint in multiple craters?

That will do for starters :)

again any and all help greatly appreciated..

Comments

A plane is a 2D face. You need a terrain. You can make one with gigantic resolution 4096 which has ample detail to make really huge in the scene. You can make the preview in the TE larger so you can better place the craters.

The other option is tiling. Once you have found a terrain you like, place it. Do not resize it yet. Put camera from above. Copy (ctrl-c, ctrl-v) the terrain and place it north. Hold down the shift key and hit the up arrow 4 times.

Go back to the terrain editor (TE) and switch off Random Extent, Random Position and Random Character. If you hold down the Shift key while clicking on any one, all 3 get deselected. Now enable Tile North and click on Fractal. This creates a new terrain from the same random seed that tiles neatly north of the previous one. Exit the TE.

Copy the new terrain again and paste it north again, this is the third terrain. In the TE, just click on Fractal and the terrain changes so it tiles again.

It is important that you follow a line, otherwise the terrains won't tile. To create a 3 x 3 terrain, go twice north, once east, twice south, once east, twice north. You can proceed west (left) instead of east (right).

Once you have your terrains, select them all and make them very slightly larger to make the gaps disappear. There are other methods to fill the gaps but this one works also. Then group the terrains and make the combined terrain as large as required. You can always access each individual terrain and put a crater in it. Just don't go too far to any edge.

If you are very patient, you can create a large sphere and put the individual terrains on the surface. You'll have to nudge each terrain so they make up a sphere, or part of it, without noticable gaps.

A plane is a 2D face. You need a terrain. You can make one with gigantic resolution 4096 which has ample detail to make really huge in the scene. You can make the preview in the TE larger so you can better place the craters.

The other option is tiling. Once you have found a terrain you like, place it. Do not resize it yet. Put camera from above. Copy (ctrl-c, ctrl-v) the terrain and place it north. Hold down the shift key and hit the up arrow 4 times.

Go back to the terrain editor (TE) and switch off Random Extent, Random Position and Random Character. If you hold down the Shift key while clicking on any one, all 3 get deselected. Now enable Tile North and click on Fractal. This creates a new terrain from the same random seed that tiles neatly north of the previous one. Exit the TE.

Copy the new terrain again and paste it north again, this is the third terrain. In the TE, just click on Fractal and the terrain changes so it tiles again.

It is important that you follow a line, otherwise the terrains won't tile. To create a 3 x 3 terrain, go twice north, once east, twice south, once east, twice north. You can proceed west (left) instead of east (right).

Once you have your terrains, select them all and make them very slightly larger to make the gaps disappear. There are other methods to fill the gaps but this one works also. Then group the terrains and make the combined terrain as large as required. You can always access each individual terrain and put a crater in it. Just don't go too far to any edge.

If you are very patient, you can create a large sphere and put the individual terrains on the surface. You'll have to nudge each terrain so they make up a sphere, or part of it, without noticeable gaps.

WOW. Thanks Horo for such a detailed and quick response, will print this off and start working on it..

You can make the preview in the TE larger so you can better place the craters I didn't realize you could do this, although I do know now :) Am I right in assuming then, that, if I bring in a terrain, re size it , that the view I see in the preview window is all of that terrain ?

I did have some other thoughts that I will try after I have done it this way, just need to think them through a bit more :)

To make sure, I included a picture how to resize the Terrain canvas. Yes, it always shows one terrain in full. It doesn't work for grouped terrains. Not the whole group is shown. You have to select one terrain.

You can also zoom in a part of the terrain (see second picture) and use the zoomed-in part only. Enable Zoom Area. A small rectangle appears. Mover the mouse to a corner and when a small cursor with 4 arrows appears, hold down left mouse button an pull. This will enlarge the selection. Move mouse to an edge and when the icon of a hand appears, you can drag the rectangle to the desired place. When clicking on Crop Fit, the terrain will change and only contain what is in the rectangle.

To make sure, I included a picture how to resize the Terrain canvas. Yes, it always shows one terrain in full. It doesn't work for grouped terrains. Not the whole group is shown. You have to select one terrain.

You can also zoom in a part of the terrain (see second picture) and use the zoomed-in part only. Enable Zoom Area. A small rectangle appears. Mover the mouse to a corner and when a small cursor with 4 arrows appears, hold down left mouse button an pull. This will enlarge the selection. Move mouse to an edge and when the icon of a hand appears, you can drag the rectangle to the desired place. When clicking on Crop Fit, the terrain will change and only contain what is in the rectangle.

Thanks Horo again for the help, There is such a lot to learn and remember just navigating let alone producing anything. But these tips are very helpful, I want to be able to put random craters on the terrain of different size, heights and positions, and this ability to zoom in will be very handy.